A phone on a pub table may be threatened by more than puddles of ale as RapidNFC has signed a deal with Rutland Print to craft beer mats that beam web addresses to mobes over the air.
Quite why one would want wireless Near Field Communications (NFC) embedded in something designed to mop up booze isn't clear. An NFC tag can …

COMMENTS

Assuming...

... "everyone" has NFC in the old mobe, then yes you can spam. Bring the operators on board and you can make sure of that, eh. Just gonna cost a bit more than that 30p for a beer mat.

Though they probably could've done much the same thing over bluetooth, had they thought to add an appropriate "spam me" profile to the spec. But the mere fact that NFC actually allows you to pick up stuff from anywhere just like that, speaks volumes as to why using it as a wallet maybe isn't just the brightest idea.

Besides, the point of a beer mat is that it absorbs spilled beer, and I'm not sure this thing will do that. But who cares, just add fancy bendable displays and lookit, moving advert pictures! Just the thing to decorate the bar with, innit? Maybe the local purveyor of vindaloo will agree to the tune of buying plenty adverts, too.

Bionic journalists

>Quite why one would want wireless Near Field Communications (NFC) embedded in something designed to mop up booze isn't clear.

So they're going to start chipping El Reg journos.

Is this in case they get lost after an afternoon session. Maybe it's in case of kidnap, altough unlikely. Most probably to communicate to the bar staff that their glass is close to empty and another beer is in order.

Re: Been in a Pub lately ?

"When was the last time anybody went in a pub and they had beermats on the table ?"

That's strange. Two of you have made that comment now but I can't remember ever being in a pub that DIDN'T have beer mats. Of course, I live in the middle of nowhere. Maybe you city folk just can't be trusted with Beer Mats, what with your funny ways an all.

Re: Been in a Pub lately ?

Re: Been in a Pub lately ?

In fact, the mats in one pub I was in recently had QR codes on them which contained the link to some competition entry or something. What does NFC do that can't be done with a barcode printed at no extra cost onto a regular beermat?

..Where the sun dont shine....

The more intrusive the ad, the more determined I am NOT to validate the ad by purchasing. I doubt I am alone in this.

How about we let the public "embed" a few NFC chips in some assorted advertards to drive home this point.

One more reason NOT to buy a phone with NFC capability. I have a phone for calls, texts mails and IMs. I have a wallet for ID/Cashetc - Cash allows me to control how much profiling is done by Credit/debit card companies and supermarkets. I am NOT a "marketing opportunity" - if my local starts treating me as such and selling that "opportunity" to a third party they will have even more fall off in trade to whine about.

So how does this work?

I take my mobile, in my pocket, into a pub and the beer mat starts communicating with it. What happens then?

Does the mobile ring or vibrate or something to let me know that the beer mat has something to say? I can see that feature being turned off pretty quickly.

Or is it that when I look at my mobile on the way home, it tells me that the beer mat had something to tell me but it couldn't attract my attention? A bit sad, really, but then nobody said being a beer mat was a good career choice.

Laminated?

If the beer mats are laminated, doesn't that make them useless for their primary function. They're used to mop up split beer and absorb the dribbles of condensation that run down the side of a glass on a hot day.

Surely this is a coaster to protect your veneered table top from damage by the hot beverages, which is fine if you are drinking a nice cup of tea.